Providing access to documents requiring a non-disclosure agreement (nda) in an online document sharing community

ABSTRACT

Provided are a computer program product, system, and method for providing access to documents requiring a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) in an online document sharing community. A document request is received from a requesting participant at a requesting participant computer comprising one of the participant computers in the network environment. In response to receiving the document request, an access page is returned to the requesting participant computer including a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) requesting that the requesting participant accept terms of the NDA in order to access the content of the document in the storage system. The content of the document is returned to the requesting participant computer in response to receiving indication from the requesting participant computer accepting the terms of the NDA.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of the Invention

The present invention relates to a computer program product, system, andmethod for providing access to documents requiring a non-disclosureagreement (NDA) in an online document sharing community.

2. Description of the Related Art

Social networking services provide computer users the ability toestablish relations with other computer users over the Internet for thepurpose of interacting, sharing information, and communicating. Certainsocial networking services allow participants to share multimediacontent and post comments upon the shared multimedia content that areviewable by other participants in the online community. For instance,YOUTUBE® allows users to post videos accessible to the public orselected groups of users, so that other users may view the videos andprovide commentary about the posted videos. FLICKR® allows users toshare photos with the general public or select private groups of users,where users may comment upon the photos. Some online services, such asIP.COM's Intellectual Property Library, provide for the sharing ofinventive or creative content by allowing inventors to publish theirresearch activity for the purposes of establishing a prior art database.(YOUTUBE is a registered trademark of Google, Inc.; FLICKR is aregistered trademark of Yahoo! Inc.; and IP.COM is a registeredtrademark of IP.COM, LLC).

Notwithstanding the prevalence of social networking services and sitesallowing users to interact, communicate, and share information, there isa need in the art for a social networking community that allows creatorsof artworks and inventions to share those works and interact so as toencourage further innovation and commercialization in a manner that iscognizant of the need to protect intellectual property rights arisingfrom inventive and artistic works.

SUMMARY

Provided are a computer program product, system, and method forproviding access to documents requiring a non-disclosure agreement (NDA)in an online document sharing community. The online document sharingcommunity is implemented in a network environment including a pluralityof participant computers operated by participants in the online documentsharing community and a storage system. A document request is receivedfrom a requesting participant at a requesting participant computercomprising one of the participant computers in the network environment.In response to receiving the document request, an access page isreturned to the requesting participant computer including anon-disclosure agreement (NDA) requesting that the requestingparticipant accept terms of the NDA in order to access the content ofthe document in the storage system. The content of the document isreturned to the requesting participant computer in response to receivingindication from the requesting participant computer accepting the termsof the NDA.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 illustrates a computing environment for an online documentsharing community.

FIG. 2 illustrates an embodiment of participant information.

FIG. 3 illustrates an embodiment of document information.

FIG. 4 illustrates an embodiment of associated search terms included inthe document information.

FIG. 5 illustrates an embodiment of public access information includedin the document information.

FIG. 6 illustrates an embodiment of private access information includedin the document information.

FIG. 7 illustrates an embodiment of public access options included inthe document information.

FIG. 8 illustrates an embodiment of a comment entry included in thecomment database.

FIG. 9 illustrates an embodiment of a group information entry.

FIG. 10 illustrates an embodiment of test results to verify that adocument is publicly available.

FIG. 11 illustrates an embodiment of access results for the testresults.

FIGS. 12 a, 12 b, and 12 c illustrate an embodiment of operations tocreate document information for a document being added to a documentstore.

FIG. 13 illustrates an embodiment of a document submission page.

FIG. 14 illustrates an embodiment of operations at a participantcomputer to process a document submission page for adding a document.

FIG. 15 illustrates an embodiment of operations to test the publicavailability of a document added to the search index.

FIG. 16 illustrates an embodiment of operations to create a group for adocument.

FIG. 17 illustrates an embodiment of a join message for a group.

FIG. 18 illustrates an embodiment of a decline message for a group.

FIG. 19 illustrates an embodiment of operations for a participantcomputer to process a join message to join a group.

FIG. 20 illustrates an embodiment of operations to process acceptance ofthe terms of a join message from an invitee.

FIG. 21 illustrates an embodiment of operations to process an NDAdecline message from an invitee.

FIG. 22 illustrates an embodiment of operations related to processingfor a group associated with a document.

FIG. 23 illustrates an embodiment of operations to process a request fora page from a requesting participant.

FIGS. 24 a and 24 b illustrates an embodiment of operation to process arequest for a document having private access options.

FIG. 25 illustrates an embodiment of operations to process a request fora friend page.

FIG. 26 illustrates an embodiment of a computer architecture in whichcomputer embodiments may be implemented.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Described embodiments provide for an online document sharing communityto allow participants to share documents describing inventions andartworks subject to intellectual property protection in a manner thatallows participants to protect their intellectual property rights bycontrolling dissemination of the content of their documents and toexpose their documents to other participants to promote development andcommercialization. With the online document sharing communityembodiments, participants may leverage the expertise of otherparticipants and at the same time control the distribution of theirintellectual property so as to preserve intellectual property protectionto which they are entitled and release intellectual property in acontrolled manner to optimize results, such as establish prior art basedon their release.

In described embodiments, participants in the online document sharingcommunity may provide documents to include in a document store andgenerate document information for the documents. The documents mayinclude subject matter protected by intellectual property laws. Accessto the content of the document is provided through the use of a searchengine and a search index that allows participants to search documentsin the document store based on document content. The server managing theonline document sharing community determines a publication time fordocuments in the document store that indicates a time the search enginemakes the content of the document accessible to the participantcomputers operated by participants not under the obligation ofconfidentiality to the owner with respect to the document content. Thispublication time may be verified and used to establish a date thecontent of the document became prior art under patent laws in the UnitedStates and other countries, and used to schedule when to file for patentprotection in the United States and other countries based on thedetermined date the subject matter subject to intellectual propertyprotection became publicly available.

Further embodiments provide techniques to allow an owner of the documentin the online document sharing community to control access to thedocuments in the document store to those participants that have acceptedthe terms of a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) associated with thedocument. Upon receiving a request from a requesting participant for adocument, an access page is returned to the participant computerincluding a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) requesting that therequesting participant accept terms of the NDA in order to access thecontent of the document. The content of the document is returned to therequesting participant computer in response to receiving indication fromthe requesting participant computer accepting the terms of the NDA.Described embodiments provide the ability for the owner of the documentto use the server to control access to the document based onparticipants accepting the terms of an NDA for the document. Further,information on the number of participants that have accepted anddeclined the NDA for the document may be recorded to provide meaningfulinformation that may assist the owner in determining potentialcommercial and investor interest in the subject matter of the document.

Further embodiments provide techniques for generating group informationfor a group created by the document owner indicating the document andparticipants in the online document sharing community as invitees. Ajoin message is sent to the invitee participant computers including adescription of the document that may exclude the content which may besubject to intellectual property protection (e.g., patent, copyright,trade secret). The join message may include the NDA that the inviteemust accept to be provided access to all of the content of the document.The described embodiments provide management of acceptances and declinesof the NDA from the join message to record information on acceptancesand declines, and allow the owner of the document to manage andfollow-up with invitees with respect to the NDA.

Further embodiments provide techniques to associate friends withparticipants in the online document sharing community so that when arequesting participant requests a page, a determination is made of thefriends of the requesting participant and the documents owned by thefriends. A determination is made as to whether the friends' documentsare private or public to determine whether to include information on thefriends' documents in the requested page. For instance, if the documentis public, then the returned page may include information and access tothe content of the friends' documents. If the friend's documents areprivate, then the requesting participant computer is only providedaccess to all the content of those friends' documents when therequesting participant is a member of a group allowed to access thosefriends' documents. In this way, participants that are friends of otherparticipants may restrict accessibility to their documents to onlyfriends and participants that are specified in the group associated withthe private document. By restricting access in this manner, participantsmay protect any intellectual property rights emanating from the contentof their documents by limiting access to their documents to thoseparticipants that are under an obligation of confidentiality through anNDA or other oral or written agreement.

Further embodiments provide techniques to determine documents to returnto a request for a page of documents from requesting participants of theonline document sharing community. Upon determining documents to includein the page, such as documents satisfying a search criteria providedwith the request, an access element is included in the returned page toprovide access to the content of the document if the document is publicor if the document is private and the requesting participant is a memberof a group associated with the private document. If the document toinclude is private and the requesting participant is not a member of thegroup of participants allowed access, then a public description of thedocument is included in the page. The public description may excludethose portions of the document content that may be eligible forintellectual property law protection. This allows document owners torestrict dissemination of their intellectual property to selectedparticipants that perhaps have agreed to maintain the content of thedocument confidential.

Moreover, comments from participants related to the document may beincluded in the page. If the document is public, then all comments fromall participants may be made accessible in the page. Alternatively, ifthe document is private, then comments from members of the group of theprivate document may only be included in the page if the requestingparticipant is also a member of the group. In this way, an owner of aprivate document may restrict access to the content of the documents andcomments concerning the document to only participants that are membersof the group of the private document. Participants that are not membersof the group of the private document may be limited to only accesscomments from participants that are not members of the group, but may nonot access all the document content and may not access comments fromparticipants that are members of the group, who may be discussing therestricted document content. By limiting access to comments in this way,participants that are not a member of the group of the private documentwill not have access to the content and comments that may describe thedocument content subject to intellectual property law protection.

Described embodiments provide an online document sharing community thatallows participants to share creative and inventive subject matter andcontrol the sharing of their intellectual property described indocuments. In this way, participants may protect intellectual propertyrights by sharing their document with participants that are authorizedor under an obligation of confidentiality. Further, participants mayexpose their intellectual property in a more public manner to increasecommercial and investor interest, and to establish a date of theinventive subject matter to establish a prior art publication date underthe patent laws. Described embodiments enhance the sharing of ideas andinventive and creative concepts in a manner that allows participants toobtain meaningful feedback to improve their inventions and artworks,protect their intellectual property rights, and expose their inventionsand creative work in a controlled manner to encourage commercialization.

FIG. 1 illustrates an embodiment of an online document sharing community2 including a server 4 that accesses a database 6 and document store 8implemented in a storage system 10 to provide participants atparticipant computers 12 a, 12 b . . . 12 n access to documents 14 andinformation on documents 14 over a network 16. Each participant computer12 a, 12 b . . . 12 n includes a viewer program 18 to render a graphicaluser interface (GUI) to enable the participants using the participantcomputers 12 a, 12 b . . . 12 n to view information on documents 14 andthe documents 14 in the document store 8 and to interact with the server4. The viewer program 18 GUI may comprise an Internet web browser, anemail program, a text message program cable of rendering Short MessageService (SMS), Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) messages, etc.

The server 4 includes a manager 20 having components to implement theonline document sharing community 2, including a request handler 22 tohandle requests for documents and information from the participantcomputers 12 a, 12 b . . . 12 n; a document manager 24 to maintain andmanage access to documents 16 in the document store 18; a page creator26 to manage the creation of pages of document information to return tothe participant computers 12 a, 12 b . . . 12 n; an account manager 28to create and manage participant accounts for participants in thedocument sharing community; and a search engine 30 to manage searchrequests for documents 16.

The search engine 30 may include a search index 32 that provides anindex of terms and information in the documents 14 in the document store8 to document 14 identifiers. For instance, the search index 32 mayinclude an entry for every word or metadata included in all thedocuments 14 added to the document store 8 and, for each index entry, alist of the document identifiers for all the documents 14 that includethe word or metadata information for the entry. Upon receiving a searchrequest from a participant computer 12 a, 12 b . . . 12 n, the requesthandler 22 may provide the search request to the search engine 30, whichin turn uses the search index 32 to determine all documents 14 thatsatisfy the search criteria. The document manager 24 may then determinewhich of the documents 14 satisfying the search results should bereturned to the participant at the participant computer 12 a, 12 b . . .12 n initiating the request. The page creator 26 may create page contentof the search results to return to the requesting participating computer12 a, 12 b . . . 12 n

The database 6 may include account information 34 having information onparticipant accounts for participants registered to participate in theonline document sharing community; group information 36 havinginformation on groups of participants allowed access to certain of thedocuments 14; document information 38 having information on each of thedocuments 14 maintained in the document store 8; a comment database 44having comments from participants about documents 14 in the documentstore 8; a message store 42 having messages communicated amongparticipants of the online document sharing community 2; and apublication list 44 indicating publicly available documents 14 that areaccessible to the public over the network 16 through the search engine30.

The server 4, storage system 10, database 6, and document store 8 may beimplemented in one computer system or in distributed computing systemsdistributed across the network 16. In further embodiments, any of theserver 4, storage system 10, database 6, and document store 8 may beimplemented in one or more computing devices accessible over the network16. The server 4 and storage system 10 may communicate over the network16 used by the participant computers 12 a, 12 b . . . 12 n or overdedicated high speed connections not used by the participant computers12 a, 12 b . . . 12 n.

The database 6 may be comprised of one or more database servers anddatabases, such as distributed databases, heterogeneous databases, etc.,including information on documents 14 that may be returned to theparticipant computers 12 a, 12 b . . . 12 n.

The network 8 may comprise a Local Area Network (LAN), the Internet,Storage Area Network (SAN), Wide Area Network (WAN), wireless network,etc. The server 4 may comprise one or more enterprise servers,mainframes, servers, etc., and the participant computers 12 a, 12 b . .. 12 n may each comprise a server, desktop computer, workstation,laptop, smart phone, tablet computer, telephony device, personal digitalassistant (PDA), etc., or other suitable computing device.

The storage system 10 may comprise one or more suitable storage devices,such as interconnected hard disk drives (e.g., configured as a DASD,RAID, JBOD, etc.), solid state storage devices (e.g., EEPROM(Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory), flash memory,Solid State Devices (SSD), flash disk, storage-class memory (SCM)),electronic memory, magnetic tape media, tape cartridges, etc.

The manager 20 components and the viewer 18 may comprise softwareprograms loaded in a memory and executed by a processor. In analternative embodiments, some portion or all of the manager 20 andviewer 18 components may be implemented in a hardware device, such as adedicated integrated circuit, e.g., Application Specific IntegratedCircuit (ASIC), expansion card, etc.

The documents 14 may comprise one or more files encoded in a computerreadable digital format representing one or more of text, images, video,3D graphics, software code, etc. In certain embodiments, the documents14 may include content subject to intellectual property protection, suchas technical descriptions of utility and design inventions, drafts ofpatent applications not yet filed, filed but unpublished patentapplications, published patent applications, issued patents, designs,artistic works, movie treatments, screenplays, books, video, music,movies, documentaries, short stories, software programs, images ofartworks, etc., which may be subject to copyright, trade secret, patent,and other forms of intellectual property protection. The documents 14may include content that is publicly available and distributed orinclude content maintained by a registered participant of the onlinedocument sharing community 2 as confidential and restricted. Documents14 are provided to the server 4 by registered participants havingaccount information 34 in the database 6.

The online document sharing community 2 may further include one or moretest computers 46 at various geographical locations which include a testprogram 48 to test the public availability of documents 14 in thedocument store 14 through the search engine 30.

FIG. 2 illustrates an embodiment of participant information 50maintained in the account information 30 in the database for registeredparticipants that participate in the online document sharing community.In certain embodiments, publicly available documents 14 may beaccessible only to registered participants having account information 34or may be accessible to any computer participant accessing the searchengine 30 over the network 16, including non-registered participants.The participant information 50 provides information on a registeredparticipant that may comprise a person or a fictional person such as abusiness, corporation, trade group, public interest organization,government body, non-governmental organization, etc. The participantinformation 50 may include a participant identifier (ID) 52; a providedlegal name of the participant 54; contact information 56, such as streetaddress, phone number, email address, web site, etc.; documentidentifiers (IDs) 58 of documents 14 that the identified participantowns; friends 60 comprising registered participants in the documentsharing community that have been acknowledged by the participant 52 asfriends; owner group identifiers (IDs) 62 identifying groups ofparticipants of which the participant 52 is the owner, meaning theparticipant 52 has the authority to edit participants and information inthe identified groups 62; member group IDs 64 of groups in which theparticipant 52 is a member; invitee group IDs 54 of groups in which theparticipant is an invitee, meaning that there is an outstandinginvitation to the participant 52 to join a group that the participant 52has not accepted; information on the participant 68, such as backgroundinformation on the entity if the participant 52 is an entity orcurriculum vitae information if the participant 52 is a person; a patentlist 70 of patents and patent publications worldwide in which theparticipant 52 is named as an inventor, applicant or assignee; and apublication list 72 of publications in which the participant 52 is namedas an author, owner, sponsor, etc. The patents and publicationsindicated in the lists 70 and 72 may comprise documents 14 in thedocument store 8.

A participant is an owner of a document in the document store 8, such asthe documents 14 identified in field 58 of the participant information50, if the participant has control over the document in the onlinedocument sharing community. Ownership of a document in the onlinedocument sharing community 2 does not imply that the participant owneralso has legal rights to the content of the document, such as rightsarising from being the assignee, creator or inventor. However, theonline document sharing community may require that the participantsubmitting a document to the server 2 certify that they have legalrights to the document authorizing them to submit the document to theonline document sharing community 2.

FIG. 3 illustrates an embodiment of document information 120 maintainedin the document information 34 for each document 14 maintained in thedocument store 8. The document information 120 includes a documentidentifier (ID) 122 providing a unique identifier of one of thedocuments 14; a fingerprint 124 providing a unique code calculated by afingerprinting algorithm, e.g., hash function, Rabin's fingerprintingalgorithm, etc., from the data in the document 14 to uniquely identifythe data of the document 14 (the document ID 122 and 124 may comprisedifferent or the same values); an owner 126 of the document for purposesof controlling the document in the server 4; a document title 128;associated search terms 130 provided by the owner 126 to use to indexthe document in the search index 32; a public description 132 comprisinga general description of the nature of the document 122 suitable forpublic distribution that may not include all the content of the document122, such as may not include the novel, inventive, original creativeaspects of the content protected by intellectual property laws that theowner 126 wants to maintain private; a public/private flag 134indicating whether the document 122 is (1) public, meaning that thedocument 122 is accessible to any participant, who may or may not beregistered in the account information 34, searching for the documentthrough the search engine 30, or (2) private, meaning that the document14 is only accessible to participants that are members of a group theowner 126 associates with the document 14; private access options 136indicating options used to control access to the document 122 indicatedas private 134; a submit date 138 indicating a date and time thedocument 122 was submitted to the manager 20 for inclusion in thedocument store 8; a publication date 140 indicating a date and/or timethe document 122, if dedicated to the public, was made publiclyavailable through the search engine 30 in a manner sufficient toconstitute a public disclosure under the patent, copyright, and/or tradesecret laws; public access information 142 providing information on thecircumstances in which a public document 122 was made publiclyavailable; private access information 144 providing information in whicha private document 122 was accessed by participants indicated in thegroup associated with the document 122; an alert schedule 146 indicatingalerts to generate to the owner 126 to remind the owner of due dates forfiling one or more patent applications related to the document 122;additional publication information 148 identifying publicly availablepublications, movies, books, online distributions, etc., describing thesubject matter of the document 122; and patenting information 150identifying patents and patent applications filed anywhere in the worldthat cover the inventive subject matter described or enabled (as thatterm is understood under 35 U.S.C. §112, par. 1 of the patent laws) inthe document 122.

In certain embodiments, the public description 132 may describe thegeneral nature or field to which the document 14 pertains withoutproviding details that would constitute a public divulgation of anyinventions or original work described in the document 122 subject topatent, copyright and/or trade secret protection, where the publicdivulgation could affect the patent, copyright or trade secretprotection arising from the document 122. The alert schedule 146 mayprovide the owner/author 126 alerts for due dates to file a patentapplication for documents 122 made publicly available to remind theowner 126 to file an application covering the inventive subject matterof the document 122 within a year of any public disclosure, such as thepublication date 140, to ensure patent protection under the patent lawsof the United States, which require that a patent application for aninvention be filed within one year of the date the invention wasdivulged to the public by the owner 126. For instance, the alert 146 mayremind the owner 126 to file a patent application covering the inventivesubject matter of a publicly disclosed document 14 within one year ofthe publication date 140. Further, the alert 146 may remind the owner ofthe document of any foreign filing deadlines based on a priority date ofa filing of a patent application in any country covering the inventivesubject matter described in the document 14.

FIG. 4 illustrates an embodiment of associated search terms 150 includedby the owner 126 in the associated search terms 130 field of thedocument information 120 for one document 14, including a predefinedcategory 152 describing a category of the content of the document 122;keywords 154 describing the content of the document 124; relevantindustry standards 156 to which the content of the document 122 isapplicable; relevant companies 160 that may be interested in the contentof the document 122; and relevant products 162 that may be related tothe subject matter of the document 122. The document manager 24 mayinclude entries in the search index 32 for the associated search terms152, 154, 156, 158, 160, 162 to indicate documents that also areassociated with or include the associated search terms 150. In this way,a query presented to the search engine 30 including as criteriaassociated search terms 150 may return documents 14 that include or areassociated with the associated search terms 150, in addition todocuments 14 that include the search criteria in their document content.

FIG. 5 illustrates an instance 170 of public access information 142included in the document information 120 for a document 122, including:information on verification of the publication date 172 to verify thatthe document 122 was in fact publicly available at the publication date140; a number times in search results 174 indicating a number of timesthe document 122 was returned in a response to queries from participantcomputers 12 a, 12 b . . . 12 n; and a number of accesses 176 indicatinga number of times participants at the participant computers 12 a, 12 b .. . 12 n accessed the document in the viewer 18.

FIG. 6 illustrates an embodiment of an instance of the private accessinformation 144 included in the document information 120 for a document,including: a date available 192 in the search engine 30 indicating thedate the private document 120 was indexed in the search index 32; anumber times in search results 194 indicating a number of times thedocument 122 was returned in a response to a query from a participantcomputer 12 a, 12 b . . . 12 n; a number of accesses 196 indicating anumber of times participants at the participant computers 12 a, 12 b . .. 12 n accessed the document 122 in their viewer 18; a number ofnon-disclosure agreement (NDA) accesses 192 indicating a number of timesparticipants accessed the NDA for the document 122, which must beaccepted before access to the private document 122 is permitted; the NDAacceptances 200 indicating the participant IDs of participants (personsand entities) that have accepted the terms of the NDA associated withthe document 14 and a date/time of acceptance; a number of NDA declines202 indicating a number of times the NDA associated with the document122 was declined; and NDA declines 204 indicating the participant IDs(persons and entities) that have declined the terms of the NDAassociated with the document 14 and a date/time the NDA was declined.

FIG. 7 illustrates an embodiment of an instance of the private accessoptions 136 included in the document information 120 of a document 122,including: a require direct requests 222 indicating whether the owner126 requires that any request for a private document be submitted to theowner 126 participant computer 12 a, 12 b . . . 12 n to consider whetherto allow access; allow access with NDA 224 indicating whether the owner126 requires that an NDA be accepted before a participant may access thedocument 122; a group access only 226 field indicating whether access tothe document 122 is only provided to members of a group associated withthe document 122; a provide public description 228 field indicatingwhether a public description 132, title 128 etc. is provided in responseto a request for a private document from a participant not authorized toaccess the document; and an allow search indexing 230 field indicatingwhether the owner 26 wants the private document to be indexed in thesearch index 32 so that the public description 132 or title 128 may beprovided in response to search requests that the document 122 satisfies.With the public description 132, the owner 126 may provide differentparticipants information on the general nature of the document 122 inresponse to search requests without disclosing novel, inventive ororiginal aspects of the content of the document 122 whose disclosurecould affect patent, copyright, and/or trade secret rights to thenon-disclosed content in the document. Alternatively, the owner 126 mayspecify that the content of the document 122 is not indexed in thesearch index 32 so that information on the document 122 is not returnedin response to search requests to the search engine 30.

FIG. 8 illustrates an embodiment of a comment entry 240 maintained inthe comment database 44 for each comment. In certain embodiments, onlyregistered participants indicated in the account information 34 maypresent comments for documents 14. A comment entry 240 includes acomment ID 242 providing a unique identifier of the comment; a documentID 244 to which the comment 242 applies; a participant 246 ID (person orentity) that created the comment 242; and the comment content 248, whichmay comprise text, audio, images, video provided by the participant 246to provide commentary or thoughts on the document 244.

FIG. 9 illustrates an embodiment of an instance of group information 260maintained in the group information 36 for a group of participants thatmay be associated with one or more documents 14. The group information260 includes a group identifier (ID) 262 to uniquely identify the group;a group owner 264 indicating the registered participant (person orentity) that created the group and/or has the authority to modify anddelete the group 262; a public/private flag 266 indicating whether thegroup is private and only includes members selected by the group owner264 or is public and permits participants to join without pre-approvalby the group owner 264; invitee IDs 268 indicating registeredparticipants that the group owner 264 has invited to join the group 262that have not yet joined; member IDs 270 indicating registeredparticipants that have accepted the invitation, i.e., have transitionedfrom an invitee state to a member state, or others that have joined thegroup 262; document identifier (IDs) 272 identifying one or moredocuments that are assigned to the group 262, such that only members 270of the group may access the documents 272 assigned to the group 262; anNDA required field 274 indicating whether acceptance of the terms of anNDA is required to join the group 262; and an NDA content field 276providing the content or terms of the NDA. In certain embodiments, theNDA content 276 may provide a default NDA, one of multiple NDAagreements provided by the manager 20 that are selected by the groupowner 264 or may comprise an NDA provided by the group owner 264.

FIGS. 10 and 11 concern information maintained for a document 14 thatmay be part of the information generated when verifying the publicationdate 172 in the public access information 170 for a document 14.

FIG. 10 provides publication test results 280 that may be associatedwith the document information 40 used to confirm that an indexeddocument 14 is publicly accessible such as to be sufficient toconstitute a public disclosure according to the patent laws, copyrightand/or trade secret laws of the United States and other countries. Thetest results 280 for a document 14 indicate one or more test computeridentifiers (IDs) 282 a . . . 282 n of computers 46 at various remotelocations in the network 16 that are recruited to test the publicaccessibility of the document 14 through the search engine 30 and accessresults 284 a . . . 284 n indicating the results of attempted accessesof the document 14 by the corresponding test computer identifiers 282 a. . . 282 n through the search engine 30 over the network 16.

FIG. 11 illustrates an embodiment of access results 284, such as accessresults 284 a . . . 284 n, including a sent request time 290 of a timethe server 4 sent the computer 282 a . . . 282 n a request to test theavailability of the document, which may include search terms indexed forthe document in the search index 32; a search request time 292indicating a time the test computer 284 a . . . 284 n received thesearch results identifying the document by sending a request to thesearch engine search engine 30 for search terms associated with thedocument 122 in the search index 32; a document receipt time 294 thetest computer 282 a . . . 282 received the requested document from theserver 4 based on the received search results; and a test fingerprintcalculated by the test computer 284 a . . . 284 n from the receiveddocument 14 that can be compared against the fingerprint 124 in thedocument information 120 to verify that the test computer 284 a . . .284 n received the same document 122 maintained in the document store 8available through the search engine 30.

The information described with respect to FIGS. 2-11 may be stored inone or more records, entries or other data structures (e.g., ExtendedMarkup Language (XML) files) maintained in the database 6.

FIGS. 12 a, 12 b, and 12 c illustrate an embodiment of operationsperformed by the document manager 24 or some other component to adddocument information 120 to the database 6 for a document 14 being addedto the document store 8. The operations to add document information 120are initiated (at block 320) upon receiving a request for at least onedocument submission page from a participant computer 12 a, 12 b . . . 12n operated by a participant in the document sharing community for whichparticipant information 120 is maintained in the database 6. The requesthandler 22 causes (at block 322) a transmission over the network 16 ofat least one document submission page 400 (FIG. 13) to the participantcomputer 12 a, 12 b . . . 12 n used by the participant in the onlinedocument sharing community 2. By causing a transmission, the server 4causes the transmission through the switches and routers of the network16 to reach the final destination participant computer 12 a, 12 b . . .12 n.

FIG. 13 provides an embodiment of a document submission page 400 havinga select document graphical element 402 to enable the participant toselect a document available through their participant computer 12 a, 12b . . . 12 n to upload to the server 4, which selected document isdisplayed in selection field 404. A graphical element comprises a userinterface control, such as a displayed button, text, icon, etc. thatenables the participant to initiate a command associated with thegraphical element, such as to upload a document 402. The select documentgraphical element 402 enables the participant at the participantcomputer 1 a, 12 b . . . 12 n to select a document to transmit to theserver 4 to associate the transmitted document with the participant'sinformation 50 (FIG. 2). Graphical elements 406 and 408 further enablethe participant to indicate whether the document is private 406 or to bemade publicly available 408.

The participant may further enter a public description in a publicdescription field 410 to be returned with search results for private andpublic documents. The public description 410 may be saved as the publicdescription 132 in the document information 120 and may comprise ageneral description of the document 122. For private documents, thepublic description may comprise a general description of the field towhich the document pertains that does not disclose subject matter thatwould jeopardize any intellectual property rights (e.g., patent,copyright, trade secret) in the United States and other countriesarising from the full document contents.

The participant may further enter search terms 412 in the add searchterms field 412, which may be saved as the associated search terms 130in the document information 120. The added search terms 412 may includekeywords, relevant industry standards, relevant industries, relevantcompanies, and relevant products.

Upon selecting the private option 406, the submission page 400 may allowthe participant to select an allow public searching graphical element414 to indicate whether the private document can be searched through thesearch index 32 by participants not under an obligation ofconfidentiality to the owner of the document without returning all thedocument content, such as the content subject to intellectual propertyprotection. Further, upon selecting the option to allow public searching414, the submission page 400 may further display graphical elements toindicate which content may be indexed in the search index 32 for publicsearching by participants not under an obligation of confidentiality tothe document owner with respect to the document. An index documentcontent graphical element 416 allows the participant to select whetherthe text in the document may be indexed in the search index 32, an indexpublic abstract graphical element 418 allows the participant to selectwhether the text in the entered public description 410 may be indexed inthe search index 32 for the document, and an index added search termsgraphical element 420 allows the participant to select whether the addedsearch terms entered in box 412 may be indexed in the search index 32for the document.

The send document graphical element 422 causes the transmission of thedocument with the private and public related selections entered in thesubmission page 400 using graphical elements 406, 408, 414, 416, 418,420 and the information entered in the fields 410 and 412. Theparticipant may not enter any description in box 410 for the publicdescription 132 so that no public description is provided when theprivate document is returned in a search to a participant not under anobligation of confidentiality to the owner with respect to the document.

If the document is indicated as public, then the entire document is madeavailable to participants not under an obligation of confidentiality tothe document owner with respect to the document through the searchengine 30 and the publication date indicates a time the search engine 30makes the content of the document available to the computer participantsof the network not under an obligation of confidentiality to the ownerwith respect to the document. In this way, selecting the send documentgraphical element 422 for a public document causes the server 4 toverify or determine the publication date 140 when the document ispublicly available through the search engine 30 to participants notunder an obligation of confidentiality to the document owner withrespect to the document being added.

The graphical elements 402 through 420 may be rendered in onetransmitted document submission page 400 or rendered in multipledocument submission pages.

Upon receiving (at block 324) a returned document 14 to add via theinvocation in the at least one document submission page 400 along withthe information entered in the document submission page 400, thedocument manager 24 creates (at block 326) document information 120(FIG. 3) for the document 14 to add having a document identifier 122,owner 126, a fingerprint 124 calculated using a fingerprint algorithm,any entered public description 132 and search terms entered in fields410 and 412, and other of the participant entered information for thedocument information 120.

The document manager 24 further indicates (at block 330) in the documentinformation 120 the participant's selection in the document submissionpage 400 that the document is public or private in the public/privateflag 134. If (at block 332) the document is public, then the documentmanager 24 scans (at block 334) the document to determine all words inthe document. The document manager 24 updates (at block 336) the searchindex 32 to associate the document identifier of the added document withall the determined words in the document, the words in the publicdescription (entered in field 410 of the document submission page 400)and any added search terms (entered in field 412 of the documentsubmission page 400) to cause the document identifier 122 to be includedin search results produced from queries presented to the search engine30 specifying any of the words or stems of the words in the document,words in the public description 132 and added search terms 130.

Control then proceeds to block 338 in FIG. 12 b where the documentmanager 24 enables (at block 338) access to the content of the document122 to the participants accessing the search engine 30 to obtain searchresults identifying the document 122. For public documents, the documentmanager 24 further determines (at block 340) a publication date 140 thedocument was included in the public search index 32. The publicationdate 140 indicates a time/date the search engine 30 made the fullcontent of the document available to the participants of the onlinecommunity not under an obligation of confidentiality to the owner of thedocument, which may or may not include unregistered participants of thenetwork 16. The determined publication date is indicated (at block 342)in the field 140 of the document information 120 being generated for theadded document. The document manger 24 then causes (at block 344) atransmission over the network 16 of confirmation that the document wasadded to the search index 32 and the publication date 140 indicating thetime/date that the document was included in the search index 32 and madepublicly available to participants not under an obligation ofconfidentiality to the owner of the document with respect to thedocument. In certain embodiments, the server 4 verifies that thedocument is publicly available to satisfy the requirements for a publicdisclosure under patent laws of the United States and other countries,which may require that the server 4 verifies that other computers mayaccess the document as a result of searching for the document throughthe search engine 30. The document manager 24 may further generate (atblock 346) calendar alerts based on the publication date 140 toelectronically notify the author of patent filing due dates related tothe publication date.

If (at block 332) the document is indicated as private, then thedocument manager 24 determines (at block 346) whether the participantindicated to allow public searching of the document (searching byparticipants not under an obligation of confidentiality to the owner ofthe document), which is indicated by the participant in the allow publicsearching graphical element 414 in the document submission page 400(FIG. 13) and is indicated in the allow search indexing 230 field of theprivate access options 136 (FIG. 7). If not, control ends. Otherwise, ifthe participant indicates to allow searching of the private document inthe search index 32, then control proceeds to block 350 in FIG. 12 c.

If (at block 350) the participant indicated to index document content,as indicated in the index document content 416 graphical element in thedocument submission page 400, then the search engine 30 or documentmanager 24 scans (at block 352) the document to determine all words inthe document and updates (at block 354) the search index 32 to associatethe document identifier of the added document with all the determinedwords in the document. From the no branch of block 350 or block 354, thedocument manager 24 determines (at block 356) whether the participantindicated to index the private document. If so, then the search engine30 or document manager 24 updates (at block 358) the search index 32 toassociate the document identifier 122 of the added document with thewords in the public description (entered in field 410 of the documentsubmission page 400 (FIG. 13) and saved in field 132 of the documentinformation 122 (FIG. 3)). From the no branch of block 356 or block 358,the document manager 24 determines (at block 360) whether theparticipant indicated to index added search terms. If so, then thesearch engine 30 or document manager 24 updates (at block 362) thesearch index 32 to associate the document identifier 122 of the addeddocument with the added search terms (entered in field 412 of thedocument submission page 400 (FIG. 13) and saved in field 130 of thedocument information 122 (FIG. 3). The document manager 24 provides (atblock 364) access to participants accessing the search engine 30 toobtain search results associated with the document in the search index32. The document manager 24 may further cause a transmission over thenetwork 16 of confirmation that the document was added to the documentstore 8 and, if indexed, confirmation that the document is indexed inthe search index 32 as specified (indexed by document content, searchterms and/or, public description) and publicly searchable.

With the described embodiments, the owner of a document may only allowindexing of terms from the public description and added search terms fora private document to prevent others from searching for the documentbased on terms related to the novel, inventive and creative aspects ofthe document on which intellectual property protection may be based.This would be done to prevent searches from revealing aspects of thedocument protected by intellectual property laws in a manner that mayjeopardize intellectual property rights. Alternatively, the document maybe indexed according to the terms of the document under the assumptionthat the inventive, novel, and creative works in the document will notbe revealed by search results returning the document and publicinformation about the document.

FIG. 14 illustrates an embodiment of operations to submit a document tothe online document sharing community performed by the viewer program 18in the participant computer 12 a, 12 b . . . 12 n operated by aparticipant and executing code included in the pages received from theserver 4. Control begins with the viewer 18 receiving (at block 430) theat least one document submission page 400. The viewer 18 uses (at block432) the document submit graphical element 422 to transmit the documentto the server and the private 406 and public 408 graphical elements toindicate the document as public or private. If the document is private,the submission of the document may further indicate, using graphicalelements 416, 418, and 420, the terms that may be indexed for publicsearching (e.g., document content, public abstract, added search terms).The viewer 18 may use (at block 434) the graphical element 410 to enterand transmit to the server 4 a public description of the documentindicated as private not including all the content of the document tomake accessible to participants accessing the search engine to obtainsearch results identifying the document. The provided public description132 may exclude key subject matter, such as the patentable,copyrightable or trade secret protected subject matter. The viewerprogram 18 may then be controlled by the participant to use (at block436) the add search term graphical element 412 to provide the server 4associated search terms 130 to add to the search index 32 of the searchengine 30, e.g., keywords; relevant industry standards, relevantindustries, relevant companies, and relevant products. The viewerprogram 18 may receive (at block 438) from the server 4 confirmationthat the search terms in the document content were added to the searchindex accessible through the network to computer participants not underan obligation of confidentiality to a owner of the document. If thedocument is public, the viewer 18 would further receive (at block 440)from the server the publication date 140 as determined and verified bythe server 4. The viewer 18 may further receive (at block 442) calendaralerts from the server 4 based on the publication date concerningnotification of patent filing due dates related to the publication date.

In certain embodiments, the viewer 18 used by a registered orunregistered participant may transmit a request to the server 2 for asearch result page for documents maintained in the document store 8. Thesearch request criteria may request all documents having publicationdates 140 within one year of a current date to determine documents thatstill may be eligible for patent protection in the United States. Thesearch engine 30 may then use the search index 32 to search fordocuments satisfying the search request criteria and return a searchresult page indicating a description of documents satisfying the searchrequest criteria, wherein the descriptions of the documents generated inthe search result page include links to the content of the documents andthe publication dates 140 of the documents indicating indicate dates thesearch engine made the content of the documents publicly available toparticipants of the online document sharing community not under anobligation of confidentiality to owners of the documents with respect tothe document. The document information presented in the search resultspage may indicate whether an application has been filed related to thecontent of the document. The viewer program 18 may then select from thesearch results pages the links to the documents to request the documentcontent.

FIG. 15 illustrates an embodiment of operations performed by thedocument manager 24 to determine and validate whether a document addedto the search index 32 is in fact publicly available to participantsaccessing the search engine 30 over the network 16 that are not under anobligation of confidentiality with respect to the document. Uponinitiating (at block 500) the public availability test for a document 14being added to the search index 32, the document manager 24 sends (atblock 502) a request to a test computer 46 over the network 16 withsearch terms added to the search index 32 used by the search engine 30in response to enabling access (at block 338 in FIG. 12 b) to thecontent of the document to participants accessing the search engine 30that are not under an obligation of confidentiality to the owner of thedocument with respect to the document whose public availability is beingtested. The document manager 24 receives (at block 504) from the testcomputer 46 over the network 16 a search results time the test computerreceived from the search engine 30 the search results identifying thedocument and a document receipt time the test computer received thedocument content of the document after accessing the content of thedocument through the received search results. This document receipt timeindicates a latest time the document was publicly available. Thedocument manger 24 further receives (at block 506) from the testcomputer 46 a test fingerprint calculated by the test computer applyingthe fingerprinting algorithm to the content of the document accessedfrom the search engine 30. The server 4 and test computers 46 use thesame fingerprinting algorithm, so the same fingerprint is produced ifthe identical document is processed fingerprinted.

If (at block 508) the test fingerprint from the test computer matchesthe fingerprint 124 for the document in the document information 120(FIG. 3), then the document manager 24 sets (at block 512) thepublication date 140 to one of a time the search engine 30 made thedocument available to the participants of the network not under theobligation of confidentiality, the search results time, and the documentreceipt time. One of these times may be selected to use as thepublication time 140 based on preferences of the server 4 administratoror the owner of the document. The document manger 24 may furtherindicate (at block 514) in test results 280 (FIG. 10) for the testcomputer, identified by the test computer ID 282 a . . . 282 n, theaccess results 284 a . . . 284 n, which may include a sent request time290 the request to the test computer was sent, a search request time 292the test computer 46 sent a search request to the search engine with thesearch terms, a document request time 294 the test computer sent therequest for the document content, the search results time 296, thedocument receipt time 298 the document was received at the testcomputer, and the test fingerprint 300 comprising the fingerprint thetest computer 282 a . . . 282 n calculated from the document using thesame fingerprint algorithm the server 4 uses to calculate thefingerprint 124 for the document in the document information 120 (FIG.11). If (at block 508) the test fingerprint and fingerprint 124 do notmatch, then an error is thrown (at block 510).

With the described embodiments of FIG. 15, the server 4 may captureinformation on when the document was made publicly available in thesearch engine 30 that may be used later by the document owner asevidence of the public availability of the document if such evidence isneeded to establish a priority date of invention or a date the documentmay be considered as prior art under patent laws of the United Statesand other countries. The use of the fingerprint provides furtherevidence that the public availability access results 284 a . . . 284 nare generated for a specific document identified by a unique fingerprint124. Such additional identifying evidence may assist in proving in acourt of law the date the document was made publicly available.

FIG. 16 illustrates an embodiment of operations to process a request tocreate a group 260 (FIG. 9) associated with one or more documents fromthe owner of the documents 14 performed by a component of the manager20, such as the account manger 28. The request to create the group 260may include indication as to whether the group is public or private 266,invitees 268, one or more documents 272, and indication 274 whetheracceptance of terms of a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) is required byeach invitee in order to access the one or more documents 272 associatedwith the group 260. Upon processing (at block 530) the request to createthe group, the manager 20 creates (at block 532) group information 280(FIG. 9) from the request indicating the group owner 264 as theregistered participant that initiated the request to create the group;the public/private flag 266; invitee IDs 268; initializes the member IDs270 to empty; at least one or more document IDs 272 assigned to thegroup (where only documents in which the participant creating the groupis the owner may be included in the group); indication of whether an NDAis required 274; and optionally the NDA content 276. The NDA content 276may comprise a default NDA provided by the manager 20, may comprise oneof multiple NDA agreements provided by the manager 20 that are selectedby the owner of the group or may comprise an NDA provided by the ownerof the group. If the owner does not provide an NDA, then a default NDAmay be used. The manager 20 may provide different NDAs for differenttype of content, such as an NDA tailored to a utility invention subjectto patent laws, an NDA tailored to a screenplay, novel subject tocopyright laws, etc.

The manager 20 may generate (at block 534) one or more join messages tothe at least one invitee to join the member group, wherein the joinmessage includes a public description of the document that does notinclude all the content of the document, such as the title 128 andpublic access information 142 and/or public description 132. If (atblock 536) the group requires an NDA to access the at least one document272, then the manager 20 includes (at block 538) NDA 276 content in thejoin message requesting the invitee to accept terms of the NDA in orderto accept the offer to join the group to access the full content of thedocument. From block 538 or if an NDA is not required, the join messageis sent (at block 540) to the at least one invitee. The join message maybe sent via email, text message, web browser, social media web site(e.g., TWITTER®, FACEBOOK®, etc.) to the invitee. (TWITTER is aregistered trademark of Twitter Inc. and FACEBOOK is a registeredtrademark if Facebook, Inc.)

FIG. 17 illustrates an embodiment of a join message 550 as including adocument description 552, such as the title 128, public description 132,public access info 142, the owner/participant providing the document,and an NDA 554, such as included in the NDA content 276, along with anaccept graphical element 556 and a decline graphical element 558enabling the invitee receiving the join message 550 to accept or notaccept (decline) the terms of the NDA 540. The accept graphical element556 causes the viewer 18 to generate an accept message to the server 4indicating agreement to accept the terms of the NDA to join the group.The invitee is only allowed to access the content of the documentassociated with the group after selecting the accept graphical element556 indicating acceptance of the NDA terms.

The document description 552 may not include all the content of thedocument, and may only include general information on the nature orfield of the content of the document. The document description 552 mayexclude description of elements of the invention, creative work,artistic work, intellectual work, and original material as described inthe document that may form the basis of patent, copyright or otherintellectual property protection.

In certain embodiments, the manager 20 may require authentication of theparticipant accepting the terms of the NDA to authenticate the identityof the participant before content of a document is made available to theparticipant. For instance, upon accepting the NDA, the manager 20 mayrequire biometric data, answer to authentication questions, etc. toauthenticate the participant accepting the NDA. Alternatively, theauthentication may involve the owner of the document contacting theaccepting invitee to verify that the invitee is in fact accepting theterms of the NDA to access the document description.

FIG. 18 illustrates an embodiment of an owner decline message 560 sentby the manager 20 to the owner of a group when an invitee selects thedecline graphical element 558. The owner decline message 560 includesdecline information 562 which may identify the invitee that selected thedecline graphical element 558, information on the group, and a follow-upwith declining invitee graphical element 564 enabling the owner of thegroup to communicate with the declining invitee, such as by requestingthe declining invitee to communicate with the owner of the group or byproviding the declining invitee access to the document without requiringthe NDA. The decline information 562 may further indicate the documentthat the invitee declined. If the group is associated with multipledocuments and the invitee selected to accept the NDA with respect tocertain of the documents in the group and not others, then the ownerdecline message 560 is only generated for those documents for which theinvitee selected to decline the NDA.

In one embodiment, the accept 556 and decline 558 graphical elements maybe associated with code embedded in the join message 550 that whenexecuted by the participant viewer 18 executing in the participantcomputer 12 a, 12 b . . . 12 n causes the transmission of an NDA acceptmessage 550 or decline message 560 (FIG. 18) to the server 4 to forwardto the group owner 264 of the at least one document 272 indicating thatthe invitee accepted or declined the NDA of the document.

In further embodiments, the join message 550 may include graphicalelements to allow the invitee to accept and decline the NDA with respectto specific documents associated with the group. In such case, the groupinformation 260 would maintain for each member 270 of the groupindication of those documents for which the NDA was declined oraccessed, so that a group member is only allowed access to the documentsfor which they accepted the NDA.

FIG. 19 illustrates an embodiment of operations performed by the viewer18 upon processing the code and content within a received join message550 (FIG. 17) for a participant comprising an invitee to the groupassociated with the received the join message. Upon receiving the joinmessage 550 (at block 580) from the server 4 to join a group 280associated with at least one document 272, if (at block 582) the inviteedoes not accept the terms of the displayed NDA 554 by interactivelyselecting the decline graphical element 556, then the viewer program 18transmits (at block 584) an NDA decline message to the server 4 to causethe server 4 to forward to the owner of the document an owner NDAdecline message 560 (FIG. 18) indicating that the participant declinedto accept the NDA of the document. If (at block 582) the participantselected the accept graphical element 556, then the viewer 18 transmits(at block 586) an acceptance message indicating acceptance of the termsof the NDA to the server 4 to join the group and a time/date theacceptance was made. The viewer 18 may then after transmittingacceptance receive (at block 588) access to the full content of the atleast one document for which the terms of the NDA were accepted. Asmentioned, additional authentication of the invitee may be performed bythe manager 20 or the owner of the document of an invitee accepting theNDA to authenticate the identity of the accepting NDA.

FIG. 20 illustrates an embodiment of operations performed by a componentof the manager 20, such as the account manager 28 managing the groups,to process an acceptance of the terms of a join message 550 from aninvitee. Upon receiving (at block 600) acceptance of the terms of thejoin message 550 from one invitee 268, which acceptance message istransmitted at block 586 (FIG. 19), the manager 20 indicates (at block602) the invitee sending the acceptance message as a member of the groupin response to receiving the accept message from the invitee. In certainembodiments, access to the document is only provided to those inviteesthat have joined the group by selecting the accept graphical element 556to send the accept message. The manager 20 further may update (at block604) the private access information 190 to increment the number of NDAacceptances 198 and indicate in the NDA acceptances 200 the time/datethe invitee accepted, which is communicated in the acceptance message.

FIG. 21 illustrates an embodiment of operations performed by a componentof the manager 20, such as the account manager 28 managing the groups,to process an NDA decline message 560 from an invitee participantcomputer. Upon receiving (at block 620) an NDA decline message from aninvitee participant computer 12 a, 12 bb . . . 12 n, the documentsharing component 20 generates (at block 622) an owner NDA declinemessage 560 to the owner of the group document including declineinformation 562 indicating that the at least one invitee participantdeclined to accept the NDA of the document. Further, for groupsassociated with multiple documents, one or more owner NDA declinemessages 560 may be provided to the owner of the group for thosedocuments the invitee declined the NDA and not the documents for whichthe invitee accepted the NDA. The owner NDA decline message 560 mayinclude (at block 624) a follow-up graphical element or control 564enabling the owner of the document receiving the owner NDA declinemessage 560 to send an NDA decline follow-up message to the invitee thatdeclined to accept the NDA and a graphical element or control enablingthe owner to include in the follow-up message access to the full contentof the document without accepting the NDA, such as the content itself ora hypertext link to the content. The follow-up message may request thatthe invitee contact the owner to further discuss the document throughmessages maintained in the message store 42, or include the graphicalelement allowing access without NDA acceptance terms should the owner ofthe document decide to waive the requirements of the NDA due to theperceived importance of the particular invitee. The owner NDA declinemessage is then forwarded (at block 626) to the owner of the documentthat created the group. The document manager 24 may indicate (at block628) in the document information 120 a number of times 202 the NDA forthe document was declined (FIG. 6) by invitees/requesting computers andthe declining participant ID and time declined in the field 204 of theprivate access information 190 for the requested document.

FIG. 22 illustrates an embodiment of operations performed by the viewerprogram 18, in an owner computer, comprising one of the participantcomputers 12 a, 12 b . . . 12 n, used by the owner creating the group.At block 640, the viewer program 18 used by the group owner transmits(at block 640) a request over the network 16 to the server 4 to create agroup associated with a document and requiring invitees to the group tosign an NDA agreement. The transmission at block 640 invokes theoperations of FIG. 16 performed by the server 4 to create the group 260.At block 642, the owner computer receives the owner NDA decline message560 that includes a follow-up graphical element 564 (FIG. 18) enablingthe owner of the document to send an NDA decline follow-up message tothe invitee participant computer that declined to accept the NDA. Theowner computer 12 a, 12 b . . . 12 n creating the group may furtherreceive (at block 644) from the server 4 over the network 16 privateaccess information 190 (FIG. 6) indicating a number of times thedocument was returned in search results 194, number of participantaccesses 196 to the document, number of NDA accesses 198, number of NDAacceptances 200, including the participant ID and time/date the NDA wasaccepted, a number of NDA declines 202, and declining participants IDsand the date/time of the NDA declines 204.

With the embodiments described with respect to FIGS. 16-22, aparticipant in the online document sharing community may create a groupassociated with one or more documents. If the group is private, then ajoin message sent to the invitees may require they accept the NDA inorder to access the full content of the one or more documents associatedwith the group. Further, information on the invitees that have declinedand accepted the NDA may be provided to the owner of the group, as wellas the capability for the owner of the group to follow up with anydeclining invitees to inquire about their decision to decline the NDAand to allow the owner to provide access to the document withoutrequesting the NDA, thereby overriding the NDA and its legal effect.

FIG. 23 illustrates an embodiment of operations performed by a componentof the manager 20, such as the request handler 22, document manager 24,etc., to receive a request for a page from a requesting participant.Upon receiving (at block 670) a request for a page with information ondocuments 14, a determination is made (at block 672) of documents toinclude in the requested page. For instance, if the page requestincludes a search criteria or document identifying criteria, then thedocuments to identify in the requested page may comprise documents 14satisfying the specified search criteria or identified by the documentidentifying criteria. The manager 20 determines (at block 674) whetherthe document information 120 for the document to include indicates thedocument is public or private, such as from the flag 134 (FIG. 3). If(at block 674) the document is public, then access (such as the contentitself or an access element, e.g., hypertext link, etc.), is included(at block 676) in the page to provide access to the content of thedetermined document. The manager 20 may further include all the comments(at block 678) for the determined document in the comment database 44 aswell as the publication date 140 (at block 680).

If (at block 674) the document is private, then a determination is made(at block 682) whether the requesting participant is a member of a group260 of participants allowed to access the document. If so, controlproceeds to block 676 to include access to the document (such as thedocument content access elements in the page) to enable access to thecontent of the document to the requesting participant. If (at block 682)the requesting participant is not a member of the group associated withthe determined document, then a determination is made (at block 684) asto whether public information to be provided to group non-memberrequestors, which may be indicated in the provide public info field 228of the private access operations 136. If public information is to beprovided, then the manager 20 includes (at block 686) in the page anaccess element to provide access to a public description of the documentnot including all the content of the document, such as excluding thecontent for which intellectual property protection is available. Themanager 20 may further include (at block 688) in the page comments forthe document from participants that are not members of the group allowedaccess to the document, and the submit date 138 of the document may alsobe included. If (at block 684) public information is not to be providedto non-member requesting participants, then no information on thedocument is included (at block 692) in the page to return to therequesting participant computer 12 a, 12 b . . . 12 n.

With the operations of FIG. 23, the page returned to the requestingparticipant may determine the information about the document andcomments based on whether the document is private or public, and, ifprivate, whether the requesting participant is a member of the group ofparticipants allowed to access the documents. The operations of FIG. 23ensure that only members of the group allowed to access all the contentof the document may receive comments from the other members of the groupthat have access to all the content. Further, requesting participantsthat are not members of the group may receive public information on aprivate document, which excludes the content subject to intellectualproperty protection, and receive comments from other participantscommenting on the document that are not members of the group and wouldalso not have access to all the content. The described embodiments thusprovide a technique for making comments from different sets ofparticipants available to requesting participants requesting a documentbased on the status of the document, public or private, and whether therequesting participant is a member of the group allowed access to allthe document content. The operations of FIG. 23 prevent a participantthat is not a member of the group of the private document from learningabout the protected content through the comments from members of thegroup that have access to the full content of the document.

FIGS. 24 a and 24 b illustrate an embodiment of operations performed bya component of the manager 20, such as the request handler 22, documentmanager 24, etc., to process a request for a document from a requestingparticipant computer 12 a, 12 b . . . 12 n having private accessoperations. Upon receiving (at block 710) the document request from arequesting participant, a determination is made (at block 712) if therequesting participant is a member of one of the groups 260 associatedwith the document, such as the one or more groups 260 identifying therequested document in the document field 272 (FIG. 9). If (at block 712)the requesting participant is a member of the group associated with thedocument, then a page is transmitted (at block 714) to the requestingparticipant computer providing access to the full content of thedocument, such as by including the document content, a link to thedocument content, etc. If (at block 712) the requesting participant isnot a member of one of the determined groups 260 associated with thedocument, then if (at block 716) the requesting participant is aninvitee of the group, as indicated in field 268, then the join message550 (FIG. 17) is sent (at block 718) to the requesting participantrequesting to join the group.

If (at block 718) the requesting participant is not an invitee of thegroup, then if (at block 720) group access only is indicated for therequested document in field 226, indicating that only members of thegroup may access the document, then the document request is declined (atblock 722). If (at block 720) the group access only field 226 indicatesthat participants not members of the group may be eligible to access thedocument and if (at block 724) the NDA access required 274 fieldindicates that an NDA is required to access the documents for the group,then the manager 20 transmits (at block 726) to the requestingparticipant computer an access page including a non-disclosure agreement(NDA) requesting the requesting participant to accept terms of the NDAin order to be provided access to the content of the document. Uponreceiving (at block 730) an acceptance of the terms of the NDA from therequesting participant, the requesting participant is indicated (atblock 732) as a member 270 of the group. Indication is made (at block734) in the NDA acceptances 200 (of the private access information 144of the document information 120) the participant IDs of participantsthat have accepted the NDA and times/dates the NDA was accepted by theparticipants.

If (at block 724) an NDA is not required and access requests to theowner are allowed (at block 728), as indicated in field 222 of theprivate access options 136, then control proceeds to block 750 in FIG.24 b to transmit to the requesting participant computer a contact pageenabling the requesting participant to send a message to the owner ofthe document requesting access to the document.

The manager 20 transmits (at block 752) a message to the document ownercomputer enabling the owner to provide access to the document to therequesting participant with or without an NDA. Upon receiving (at block754) an authorization message from the document owner to offer access tothe requesting participant, if (at block 756) the authorization does notrequire an NDA, then the manager 20 adds (at block 758) the requestingparticipant as a member of the group 260 associated with the document.If (at block 756) the authorization requires an NDA, then controlproceeds to block 726 in FIG. 24 a to transmit the access page to therequesting participant computer requesting acceptance of the NDA toaccess the document. If (at block 756) the authorization does notrequire an NDA to access, then the manager 20 adds (at block 758) therequesting participant as a member 270 of the group 260 associated withthe document and a page is returned (at block 760) to the requestingparticipant computer 12 a, 12 b . . . 12 n providing access to the fullcontent of the document, such as by providing the content or a link tothe full content.

FIG. 25 illustrates an embodiment of operations performed by one or morecomponents of the manager 20, such as the request handler 22, documentmanager 24, etc., to process a request for a friend page from arequesting participant computer 12 a, 12 b . . . 12 n. Upon receiving(at block 800) the request, the manager 20 determines (at block 802)participant information in the database 34 for friends of the requestingparticipant, which may be indicated in the friends field 60 of theparticipant information 50 for the requesting participant. Adetermination is made (at block 804) from the document information 120associated with the participants indicated as friends documents owned bythe friend participants. The document information 120 may be fordocuments for which the determined friends are the owner. For eachdetermined document owned by the friend participants, the manager 20 mayperform (at block 806) the operations at blocks 674 through 692 in FIG.23 to include information and links to the determined documents in thefriend page. The manager 20 may further determine (at block 808) atleast one document owned by the requesting participant to include in thefriend page. The manager 20 may include in the page, for the at leastone determined document owned by the requesting participant, adescription of the document and the comments by the friend participantsand the requesting participants for the at least one determineddocument.

With the operations of FIG. 25, the document sharing manager may createa page for a requesting participant having information on documentsowned by friends of the requesting participant and the requestingparticipant documents including comments to allow the requestingparticipant to engage in conversation about their own and friends'documents. This allows a private group of inventors or artists to sharetheir work the friends page to receive meaningful comments from a selectgroup of participants to allow them to more fully develop the inventionsand creative content described in their documents.

Described embodiments provide an online document sharing community thatallows participants to share creative and inventive subject matter andcontrol the sharing of their intellectual property described indocuments to preserve intellectual property rights and, for inventions,establish a prior art date that may be used under the patent laws.Further, participants may present their intellectual property in apublic forum through the online document sharing community in order toincrease commercial and investor interest.

CONCLUSION

The described operations may be implemented as a method, apparatus orcomputer program product using standard programming and/or engineeringtechniques to produce software, firmware, hardware, or any combinationthereof. The described operations may be implemented as code maintainedin a “computer readable storage medium”, where a processor may read andexecute the code from the computer storage readable medium. A computerreadable storage medium may comprise a device of storage media such asmagnetic storage medium (e.g., hard disk drives, floppy disks, tape,etc.), optical storage (CD-ROMs, DVDs, optical disks, etc.), volatileand non-volatile memory devices (e.g., EEPROMs, ROMs, PROMs, RAMs,DRAMs, SRAMs, Flash Memory, firmware, programmable logic, etc.), SolidState Devices (SSD), etc. The code implementing the described operationsmay further be implemented in hardware logic implemented in a hardwaredevice (e.g., an integrated circuit chip, Programmable Gate Array (PGA),Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC), etc.). Still further,the code implementing the described operations may be implemented in“transmission signals”, where transmission signals may propagate throughspace or through a transmission media, such as an optical fiber, copperwire, etc. The transmission signals in which the code or logic isencoded may further comprise a wireless signal, satellite transmission,radio waves, infrared signals, Bluetooth, etc. The program code embeddedon a computer readable storage medium may be transmitted as transmissionsignals from a transmitting station or computer to a receiving stationor computer. Those skilled in the art will recognize that manymodifications may be made to this configuration without departing fromthe scope of the present invention, and that the article of manufacturemay comprise suitable information bearing medium known in the art.

FIG. 26 illustrates an implementation of a computer architecture 900that may be implemented at the server 4, the participant computers 12 a,12 b . . . 12 n and the test computers 46. The architecture 900 mayinclude a processor 902 (e.g., one or more microprocessors and cores), amemory 904 (e.g., a volatile memory device), and storage 906 (e.g., anon-volatile storage, such as magnetic disk drives, solid state devices(SSDs), optical disk drives, a tape drive, etc.). The storage 906 maycomprise an internal storage device or an attached or network accessiblestorage. Programs, including an operating system 908 and applications910 stored in the storage 906 are loaded into the memory 904 andexecuted by the processor 902. The applications 910 may include thedescribed manager 20 its components 22, 24, 26, 28, 30, and 32 and otherprogram components described above. The architecture 900 furtherincludes a network card 912 to enable communication with the network 16.An input device 914 is used to provide user input to the processor 902,and may include a keyboard, mouse, pen-stylus, microphone, touchsensitive display screen, or any other activation or input mechanismknown in the art. An output device 916, such as a display monitor,printer, storage, etc., is capable of rendering information transmittedfrom a graphics card or other component. The output device 916 mayrender the GUIs described with respect to figures and the input device914 may be used to interact with the graphical controls and elements inthe GUIs described above. The architecture 900 may be implemented in anynumber of computing devices, such as a server, mainframe, desktopcomputer, laptop computer, hand held computer, tablet computer, personaldigital assistant (PDA), telephony device, cell phone, etc.

The terms “an embodiment”, “embodiment”, “embodiments”, “theembodiment”, “the embodiments”, “one or more embodiments”, “someembodiments”, and “one embodiment” mean “one or more (but not all)embodiments of the present invention(s)” unless expressly specifiedotherwise.

The terms “including”, “comprising”, “having” and variations thereofmean “including but not limited to”, unless expressly specifiedotherwise.

The enumerated listing of items does not imply that any or all of theitems are mutually exclusive, unless expressly specified otherwise.

The terms “a”, “an” and “the” mean “one or more”, unless expresslyspecified otherwise.

The use of variable references, such as “a”, “n”, etc., to denote anumber of instances of an item may refer to any integer number ofinstances of the item, where different variables may comprise the samenumber or different numbers. Further, a same variable reference usedwith different elements may denote a same or different number ofinstances of those elements.

Devices that are in communication with each other need not be incontinuous communication with each other, unless expressly specifiedotherwise. In addition, devices that are in communication with eachother may communicate directly or indirectly through one or moreintermediaries.

A description of an embodiment with several components in communicationwith each other does not imply that all such components are required. Onthe contrary a variety of optional components are described toillustrate the wide variety of possible embodiments of the presentinvention.

Further, although process steps, method steps, algorithms or the likemay be described in a sequential order, such processes, methods andalgorithms may be configured to work in alternate orders. In otherwords, any sequence or order of steps that may be described does notnecessarily indicate a requirement that the steps be performed in thatorder. The steps of processes described herein may be performed in anyorder practical. Further, some steps may be performed simultaneously.

When a single device or article is described herein, it will be readilyapparent that more than one device/article (whether or not theycooperate) may be used in place of a single device/article. Similarly,where more than one device or article is described herein (whether ornot they cooperate), it will be readily apparent that a singledevice/article may be used in place of the more than one device orarticle or a different number of devices/articles may be used instead ofthe shown number of devices or programs. The functionality and/or thefeatures of a device may be alternatively embodied by one or more otherdevices which are not explicitly described as having suchfunctionality/features. Thus, other embodiments of the present inventionneed not include the device itself.

The illustrated operations of the figures show certain events occurringin a certain order. In alternative embodiments, certain operations maybe performed in a different order, modified or removed. Moreover, stepsmay be added to the above described logic and still conform to thedescribed embodiments. Further, operations described herein may occursequentially or certain operations may be processed in parallel. Yetfurther, operations may be performed by a single processing unit or bydistributed processing units.

The description of various embodiments of the invention has beenpresented for the purposes of illustration and description. It is notintended to be exhaustive or to limit the invention to the precise formdisclosed. Many modifications and variations are possible in light ofthe above teachings. It is intended that the scope of the invention belimited not by this detailed description, but rather by the claimsappended hereto. The above specification, examples and data provide acomplete description of the manufacture and use of the composition ofthe invention. Since many embodiments of the invention can be madewithout departing from the spirit and scope of the invention, theinvention resides in the claims hereinafter appended.

1. A computer readable storage device including a computer programexecuted by at least one processor to perform operations in an onlinedocument sharing community in a network environment including aplurality of participant computers operated by participants in theonline document sharing community and a storage system, the operationscomprising: receiving a search request from a requesting participant ata requesting participant computer comprising one of the participantcomputers in the network environment for a result page for documentssatisfying a search criteria; returning the result page to therequesting participant computer identifying at least one documentidentified by a search engine as satisfying the search criteria;receiving a document request from the requesting participant for one ofthe documents identified in the result page; returning, in response toreceiving the document request, an access page to the requestingparticipant computer, including a non-disclosure agreement (NDA)requesting that the requesting participant accept terms of the NDA inorder to access the content of the document in the storage system; andreturning the content of the document to the requesting participantcomputer in response to receiving indication from the requestingparticipant computer accepting the terms of the NDA.
 2. The computerreadable storage device of claim 1, wherein the operations furthercomprise: generating document information in a database identifyingdocuments in the storage system and owners of the documents, wherein atleast one of the documents includes content comprising subject matterprotected by intellectual property laws; processing the documents to addsearch terms for the documents and the document identifiers to thesearch engine accessible through the network to participants in theonline community not under an obligation of confidentiality to theowners of the documents with respect to the documents.
 3. The computerreadable storage device of claim 1, wherein the operations furthercomprise: returning to the requesting participant computer a contactpage enabling the requesting participant computer to send a message toan owner of the requested document in response to the document request;forwarding the message to the owner enabling the owner to provide accessto the document to the requesting participant; and receiving anauthorization message from the owner indicating to offer access to thedocument to the requesting participant upon acceptance of the NDA by therequesting participant computer, wherein the access page including theNDA is returned to the requesting participant computer in response toreceiving the authorization message from the owner.
 4. The computerreadable storage device of claim 3, wherein the message forwarded to theowner enables the owner to indicate to provide access to the documentwith an NDA and indicate to provide access to the document to therequesting participant without the NDA, wherein the authorizationmessage comprises a first authorization message, and wherein theoperations further comprise: receiving a second authorization messagefrom the owner indicating to offer access to the document to therequesting participant without requiring acceptance of the terms of theNDA; and providing the requesting participant access to the documentwithout requiring acceptance of the terms of the NDA in response to thesecond authorization message.
 5. The computer readable storage device ofclaim 1, wherein the operations further comprise: maintaining in acomputer database participant information for a plurality ofparticipants registered in the database as participants in the onlinecommunity, wherein the participant information for at least one of theparticipants is associated with document information for at least onedocument owned by the at least one participant, wherein the databaseincludes participant information for the requesting participantrequesting the document; and indicating in the document information therequesting participant accepting the NDA and a time the NDA wasaccepted.
 6. The computer readable storage device of claim 5 wherein theoperations further comprise: indicating, in the document information,information on the requesting participant declining to accept the NDA toaccess the content of the document and a time the NDA was declined. 7.The computer readable storage device of claim 5, wherein the operationsfurther comprise: forwarding an owner NDA decline message to the ownerof the document indicating that the requesting participant declined toaccept the NDA for the document.
 8. The computer readable storage deviceof claim 7, wherein the operations further comprise: including in theowner NDA decline message a follow-up graphical element enabling theowner of the document to send a decline follow-up message to therequesting participant that declined to accept the NDA.
 9. The computerreadable storage device of claim 8, wherein the owner NDA declinemessage includes identification information for the requestingparticipant that declined to accept the NDA, wherein the follow-upgraphical element in the owner NDA decline message enables the owner toinclude in the follow-up message to the requesting participant a link toenable the requesting participant to access the content of the documentwithout accepting the NDA.
 10. The computer readable storage device ofclaim 5, wherein the operations further comprise: indicating in thedocument information a number of times the NDA for the document wasaccepted; and indicating in the document information a number of timesthe NDA for the document was declined.
 11. The computer readable storagedevice of claim 1, wherein the operations further comprise: performingan authentication of the requesting participant indicating acceptance ofthe terms of the NDA to authenticate an identity of the requestingparticipant, wherein the content of the document is made available tothe requesting participant accepting the terms of the NDA in response toauthenticating the identity of the requesting participant.
 12. A systemfor implementing an online document sharing community in a networkenvironment including a plurality of participant computers operated byparticipants in the online document sharing community and a storagesystem, comprising: a processor; and a computer readable storage deviceincluding code executed by the processor to perform operations, theoperations comprising: receiving a search request from a requestingparticipant at a requesting participant computer comprising one of theparticipant computers in the network environment for a result page fordocuments satisfying a search criteria; returning the result page to therequesting participant computer identifying at least one documentidentified by a search engine as satisfying the search criteria;receiving a document request from the requesting participant for one ofthe documents identified in the result page; returning, in response toreceiving the document request, an access page to the requestingparticipant computer, including a non-disclosure agreement (NDA)requesting that the requesting participant accept terms of the NDA inorder to access the content of the document in the storage system; andreturning the content of the document to the requesting participantcomputer in response to receiving indication from the requestingparticipant computer accepting the terms of the NDA.
 13. The system ofclaim 12, wherein the operations further comprise: returning to therequesting participant computer a contact page enabling the requestingparticipant computer to send a message to an owner of the requesteddocument in response to the document request; forwarding the message tothe owner enabling the owner to provide access to the document to therequesting participant; and receiving an authorization message from theowner indicating to offer access to the document to the requestingparticipant upon acceptance of the NDA by the requesting participantcomputer, wherein the access page including the NDA is returned to therequesting participant computer in response to receiving theauthorization message from the owner.
 14. The system of claim 12,wherein the operations further comprise: maintaining in a computerdatabase participant information for a plurality of participantsregistered in the database as participants in the online community,wherein the participant information for at least one of the participantsis associated with document information for at least one document ownedby the at least one participant, wherein the database includesparticipant information for the requesting participant requesting thedocument; and indicating in the document information the requestingparticipant accepting the NDA and a time the NDA was accepted.
 15. Thesystem of claim 14, wherein the operations further comprise: forwardingan owner NDA decline message to the owner of the document indicatingthat the requesting participant declined to accept the NDA for thedocument.
 16. The system of claim 14, wherein the operations furthercomprise: indicating in the document information a number of times theNDA for the document was accepted; and indicating in the documentinformation a number of times the NDA for the document was declined. 17.A method performed by a computing system including at least oneprocessor for implementing an online document sharing community in anetwork environment including a plurality of participant computersoperated by participants in the online document sharing community and astorage system, wherein the computer program is implemented in acomputer readable storage medium, wherein the computer program isexecuted to perform operations, comprising: receiving, by the computingsystem, a search request from a requesting participant at a requestingparticipant computer comprising one of the participant computers in thenetwork environment for a result page for documents satisfying a searchcriteria; returning, by the computing system, the result page to therequesting participant computer identifying at least one documentidentified by a search engine as satisfying the search criteria;receiving, by the computing system, a document request from therequesting participant for one of the documents identified in the resultpage; returning, by the computing system, in response to receiving thedocument request, an access page to the requesting participant computer,including a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) requesting that therequesting participant accept terms of the NDA in order to access thecontent of the document in the storage system; and returning by thecomputing system, the content of the document to the requestingparticipant computer in response to receiving indication from therequesting participant computer accepting the terms of the NDA.
 18. Themethod of claim 17, further comprising: returning to the requestingparticipant computer a contact page enabling the requesting participantcomputer to send a message to an owner of the requested document inresponse to the document request; forwarding the message to the ownerenabling the owner to provide access to the document to the requestingparticipant; and receiving an authorization message from the ownerindicating to offer access to the document to the requesting participantupon acceptance of the NDA by the requesting participant computer,wherein the access page including the NDA is returned to the requestingparticipant computer in response to receiving the authorization messagefrom the owner.
 19. The method of claim 17, further comprising:maintaining in a computer database participant information for aplurality of participants registered in the database as participants inthe online community, wherein the participant information for at leastone of the participants is associated with document information for atleast one document owned by the at least one participant, wherein thedatabase includes participant information for the requesting participantrequesting the document; and indicating in the document information therequesting participant accepting the NDA and a time the NDA wasaccepted.
 20. The method of claim 19, further comprising: indicating inthe document information a number of times the NDA for the document wasaccepted; and indicating in the document information a number of timesthe NDA for the document was declined.